300 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 387. 



showy pale petaloid bracts forming a star-like involucre; 

 and Acacia glaucescens, the coast Myall, a handsome 

 species with dark, exceedingly hard wood, used in turnery, 

 for mallets and other small articles. 



The form of this book, as displayed in the first instal- 

 ment, is good ; the botanical descriptions, which are clear, 

 concise, and not too technical, are enriched with systemati- 

 cally arranged historical, geographical, economic and cul- 

 tural notes. In California especially, where nearly all 

 Australian plants flourish apparently as well as in their 

 native land, this work should prove especially serviceable 

 to cultivators of exotic plants. It is published by the Poorest 

 Branch of the Department of Mines and Agriculture of 

 New South Wales, at Sydney, the price being 2s. 6d. for 

 each part to subscribers, and 3s. 6d. for single parts. 



Notes. 



The Peach-blossom has been selected by a vote of theschool- 

 childreu of Delaware as the floral emblem of that state. 



The Nomenclature Committee of the Society of American 

 Florists desires information as to any cases of misnaming or 

 confusion of names in American decorative plants, as well as 

 of any other matters coming within the line of work of the 

 committee. Communications should lie addressed to tlie 

 chairman of the committee, Professor William Trelease, St. 

 Louis, IVtissouri. 



In the Bulletin of the United States National Museum, No. 

 39, Dr. Frederick D. CoviUe, botanist of the Department of 

 Agriculture, has recently printed some clear directions for col- 

 lecting specimens of plants and information illustrating their 

 aboriginal uses, which will be found useful to both travelers 

 and settlers who have an opportunity to observe tlie habits of 

 any of the tribes of American Indians. 



An old legend traces the origin of the Thistle as the emblem 

 of the Scottish Icingdom to the far-away lime when the Danes 

 were invading the country. On a dark night, runs the story, 

 as they were advancing to attack an encampment of Scots, one 

 of them trod on a Thistle, and the thoughtless exclamation 

 which followed awakened the slumberers, who, springing to 

 arms, defeated their assailants. In gratitude for this deliver- 

 ance the flower of the Thistle was adopted as the national 

 emblem. 



At a recent sale in Paris of the library of the architect Des- 

 tailleur a copy of the first edition of Le Traite de Jardinage 

 scion les Raisons de la Nature ct de V Art, by Jacques Boyceau 

 de la Barauderie, realized two thousand francs. This exceed- 

 ingly rare work, which contains a number of carefully en- 

 graved plates of parterres, and of whicli only a few copies are 

 now known to exist, is said by Monsieur Andre, in a recent 

 issue of the Revue Horiieole, to give the only faithful account 

 of the gardens of the time of Louis XIII. A copy of IVi'/ton 

 Garden, published in 1640, was sold at the same sale for six 

 hundred francs, and Le Fidele Jardinier en Differentes Sorfes 

 de Parterres, by Pierre Betin, published in Paris in 1636, brought 

 five hundred and eighty-two francs. 



On the banks of the Brandywine, near Wilmington, Dela- 

 ware, gunpowder works were estafilislied by a Frenchman, 

 Eleutht-re-Irenee du Pont de Nemours, the American founder 

 o£ the distinguished Dupont family of Delaware, who came to 

 this country in 1799. They are still in existence and are car- 

 ried on by the grandchildren of their founder. But his name 

 lias a further interest as that of the planter who is believed to 

 have first introduced the European Chestnut into the Lfnited 

 States. He was deeply interested in horticulture and agricul- 

 ture, and in 1805 planted specimens of the French Chestnut 

 on his Delaware estate. The original trees are no longer in 

 existence, but their progeny are widely scattered through the 

 middle states, where several npmed varieties, descendants of 

 the Du Pont Chestnut, are recognized. 



Professor F. L. ffanley, in the First Annual Report of the 

 Maine Forestry Commission, argues, from an examination of 

 the statistics ot the lumber produced on the Penobscot River, 

 that the lumber industry is waning in the Pine-tree State. In 

 1856 the cut on that river was about 180,000,000 feet ; in 1866 

 this was increased to 237,000.000 feet, and in 1872, when it 

 reached its maximum, to 246,000,000 feet. Since then it has 

 gradually fallen, and in 18S7 tlie yield was only about 150,000,- 



000 feet. The great falling off has been in pine — from loi,- 

 000,000 feet in 1856 to 29,000,000 feet in 1887. To secure the 

 present supply, too, it is necessary to cut every year nearer 

 the head-waters of the streams and to cut smaller and poorer 

 trees, which a few years ago would have been passed by as 

 unmarketable. Logs which are now driven down the Penob- 

 scot do not contain an average of much over a hundred feet, 

 board measure, of lumber, while twenty years ago they are 

 said to have contained several hundred feet. The annual sup- 

 ply, too, is now largely cut from second, and even third, 

 growth, and it is said that the time is approaching when the 

 entire Maine lumber crop will come from forests that have 

 been cut over. There are only limited areas, it appears, in 

 the state where Pine follows Pine, and the second growth is 

 inferior to the first. 



All America is interested in the eventual fate of Jackson Park, 

 in Chicago, and the latest accounts of the work that is to be 

 done thei^e sound very promising. According to a letter re- 

 cently published in the American Architect and Building 

 News, $80,000 has been handed over to the Board of South 

 Park as the price received from the sale of the wrecked Fair 

 buildings, and this money they will at once layout in local im- 

 provements. The plan for them, which was prepared some 

 time ago by Mr. Olmsted, will be followed as closely as possi- 

 ble. At the northern end of the park, in the neighborhood of 

 the Fine Arts Building, which has been preserved under the 

 name ot the Field Museum, the landscape arrangements will 

 be of a somewhat formal character, as suited to the environ- 

 ment of so large and so classic a structure. But a little farther 

 off the drives curve in a more informal way around the lagoon 

 and Wooded Island, until they sweep gracefully up to the top 

 of the little eminence which, near the southerly end of the 

 park, overlooks the Convent of La Rabida. The great golden 

 statue of Liberty still stands, and where the peristyle formerly 

 stood, between it and Lake Michigan, there will be a beautiful 

 drive along the water's edge, following the lines of the shore 

 from the long pier behind the statue back to the northern ex- 

 tremity of the pleasure-ground. Greenhouses are to be erected 

 near the Field Museum, and here, we are told, " floral dis- 

 plays " will be concentrated, expressing a higher grade of 

 taste, one must hope, than those which have hitherto existed 

 in other places in the parks of Chicago. Certain tracts of land 

 near where the great Manufacturers' Building stood will be 

 prepared for tennis, baseball and other sports. 



Writers in the Boston papers are making their annual pro- 

 tests against the larvas of Tussock moths, Orgyia leucostigma, 

 which for many years have destroyed the summer foliage of 

 the trees on the Common. This year the caterpillars appear 

 to be unusually numerous, not only on the Common, but on 

 the trees in several streets on Beacon Hill, notably on Chest- 

 nut and Mount Vernon streets ; and the secretary of the State 

 Board of Agriculture has even addressed a letter to the Mayor 

 of the city on the subject, warning him of the danger of allow- 

 ing these insects to multiply, and pointed out the simple 

 methods needed to exterminate, or, at least, to greatly check their 

 ravages. Few insects are so easily destroyed as the Tussock 

 moth. The wingless female lays her eggs on the outside of 

 the cocoon from which she has just emerged, so that by de- 

 stroying the cocoons which the caterpillars spin on the trunks 

 and branches of trees and on the neighboring fences and walls 

 the next year's brood of larv.e is killed. The cocoons may be 

 easily distinguished during the winter on the trunks and bare 

 branches, and it is not a difficult or expensive matter to pick 

 them by liand or rub them off with stiff brushes. The city 

 forester, discouraged, no doubt, by his attempts made several 

 years ago to protect the trees on the Common from insects by 

 injecting some mysterious compound into holes bored into 

 the trunks, which have now developed in some cases into 

 large and dangerous wounds, seems perfectly helpless in the 

 matter, pleading the want of sufficient funds to enable him to 

 clean the trees. More than $80,000 are expended annually 

 under his sole direction, however, in maintaining the small 

 public grounds of Boston. Some of this money is spent in 

 keeping up a large greenhouse establishment to protect trop- 

 ical plants in winter, wdiich, as they are used in Boston, are an 

 injury to the appearance of the city. What must be a consid- 

 erable part of it goes into the floral emblems and other horti- 

 cultural abominations which disfigure the Public Garden. The 

 cultivated and intelligent Bostonians deplore the extravagance 

 of their garden, and the example of bad taste which it sets, but it 

 is generally praised by the press, and every year it grows more 

 vulgar and less what such a garden should be. A small part 

 of the money spent in making the Public Garden ugly would, 

 if properly used, rid every tree in the city of insects. 



